Friday, September 11, 2009

Wii Sports Resort Review











As soon as you boot up the game, you're inside a plane as one of your Miis, and you have to skydive down to the island. You catch a few Miis and form up a circle. As soon as the photographer gets her shot, all of you parachute upwards and the streaking, bright letters on yours beckon you to paradise- Wii Sports Resort.

The MotionPlus thing works wonders, although it does take up a bit more battery power. Some of the sports seemed like they were meant to be controlled with the new peripheral. You just can't imagine the swordfighting game without 1:1 motion control. Sure, there's the annoying thing about calibrating the MotionPlus before you start playing and sometimes it goes a bit off, but a button press is all you need to reposition it, so it's all good. Swordfighting has been done before on the Wii, but without MP you could only slash with the pointer on the screen the whole time(I'm looking at you, Dragon Quest Swords). It's clunky, that it is.

Table tennis is wonderful, it's much, much easier to do backhands and spins than with the Wiimote alone. It's a whole lot more fun than Wii Play's offering, although it's just a 6-point game(you could increase it to 11 by holding down the 2 button before each game, but that's beside the point). Archery is also quite fun, but without competition it gets old.

New golf and bowling controls well with MotionPlus, but angles make golf a little frustrating(go straight DAMMIT!). Fortunately, one major issue from Wii Sports has been addressed, the putting. No more swearing when a small waggle of the Wiimote causes your ball to fly past the hole when it's only a foot away. Frisbee is cute and the extra golf frisbee is just great. Holes in ones have never been easier to do.

What wasn't so great...anything that involved the water. All three water sports(Power Cruising, Wakeboarding, Canoeing) were boring and didn't have many clear cut goals other than getting high scores. You have no competition in these sports at all. Sure, you might argue about golf, bowling and archery, but the difference here is those 3 are more fun than the water sports could ever be. You also get the same unmotivated feeling for the 3 Point game in Basketball.

Want to know the island in more detail? Get on a plane and tour the island and visit all its landmarks. You'll be rewarded with different times of day, a balloon shooter and even your own resort home(you can't enter it, obviously. Dang.). If you so please, you can tour the island via a cycling race. Really, it's not as bad as most people make it out to be(it's not like the MotionPlus could be strapped to your feet while you make pedaling movements).

I know it sounds more like a love letter than a review, but Sports Resort really is great. However, great as it is, it only has so much lasting appeal solo. You might want to go to the Pro Cla$$ on all the activities, or you could have a go at completing the stamp collection- mini achievements in the game like getting 3 strikes in a row on bowling, or getting 3 bullseyes in one round of Archery, but the main attraction of Wii Sports has always been its multiplayer. It's the perfect party game. Have 3 friends over(make sure they have their own MotionPluses) and your afternoon's probably spent.

Overall, a great Wii game that no one should miss out on. It's made for the casual crowd, but regular gamers should have quite a time with it too. It's 'Everyone's Game', as Nintendo put it in their E3 2009 presentation. Brilliant stuff.

By: pikaby


Share/Save/Bookmark

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Some news

Okay, I'll make this a short blog. Just wanted to add some bits of Nintendo news.

Metroid Prime Trilogy, the re-release package of all 3 games in the Metroid Prime series for the NIntendo Wii, will be released in the US on August 24 2009. Three of the greatest games for the price of one? If you haven't already bought or played Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on the Wii alreaady, this is an excellent deal, and having the other 2 Primes is irresistable.

Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles will be released later this year, on November 17. The follow-up to Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles on the same console, Darkside features the same rail shooter gameplay (Wii Zapper ftw!), only with a different segment of the RE storyline being the focus.

Wii Sports Resort has sold 3 million units worldwide, with 1 million shifted in the US alone, and sales for Europe also breaching the 1m mark.

That should be all for now.
Share/Save/Bookmark

Thursday, August 20, 2009

5th Cell to quit DS development?

Based on Gamespot's article on the matter.

5th Cell, developer of games as Drawn to Life and then Scribblenauts and Drawn to Life 2 later this year, has amazed DS owners as their offerings have had lots of originality and a colorful, fun vibe to them. In particular Drawn to Life was unique in that it allowed you not only to draw out and create your own hero, but also many parts of the environments, including platforms , ladders and springs. It's typical platforming fare, but the creative aspect and the charming, cute visuals were what made it stand out.

[img]http://dsmedia.ign.com/ds/image/article/819/819153/drawn-to-life-20070910044518940_640w.jpg[/img]
IGN even made a Megaman

It comes as a surprise that they're stopping development of games on the DS after Scribblenauts and Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter are released, and from here on, 5th Cell states that they are moving towards making games for consoles instead. To quote them: 'This is our big last hurrah for DS games'. They might make more DS games, they might not.

Quite how this move will affect their quality and style of games is anyone's guess. Hopefully their lashings of originality won't be lost in translation to the bigger, meaner machines. Especially with Scribblenauts getting so much attention and poised to be DS Game of the Year for its sheer amount of customization and encouragement of the gamer to use their creativity.

On a side note, Scribblenauts will be released on September 15 this year, and Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter by the end of 09 for both the DS and the Wii.
Share/Save/Bookmark

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Introduction

This is an introduction to our gaming site and forum. Wer'e known as Nintendo 5-Star, and we hope you'll rate us 5 stars for everything!

N5S started out as a Kirby fansite on Gamespot.com, with the name Kirby 5-Star. After 2 1/2 years, we moved out of Gamespot and landed in Sparklit's Activeboard service. It wasn't enough to garner attention, so we moved once again after half a year in Activeboard, to our current home on Invisionfree, where we rebranded ourselves as N5S.

Our main home is the Nintendo 5-Star forum, which is merged with the competitive gaming clan Brotherhood. This blog will be mainly used to write our gaming updates and personal member game reviews. The current forum can be seen here, and we hope to see you join the community!
Share/Save/Bookmark